The interpretation of whether the benchmark is broken or not depends on what the benchmark was trying to ascertain. If it was trying to ascertain which CPU could process instructions fastest and most efficiently then it could be argued that it was broken because the result is heavily influenced by the logic of the compiler rather than the performance of the CPU. If it was trying to ascertain which platform had a better result allowing for toolchain-based optimizations, then you could argue the benchmark was fair *except* if this benchmark had specific optimizations applied to it that are not representative of what could be expected in a typical setting, and if that was not declared, because that would set the wrong expectations for readers, and it seems that is part of the allegation.
Supposedly, benchmarks are written to simulate real workloads. It seems to me that tweaking processor designs to run benchmarks faster is a good idea.
That may be true, *if* you don't break the benchmark in the process. This link, shared by another posted further down the/. thread, accuses AnTuTu of exactly that:
In summary, while the compiled ARM code performed a series of bitwise operations as written in order to excercise the CPU instructions, the Intel compiler seems to have applied some compile-time smarts to effectively bypass a lot of the work but achieve the same end result. In a real-world program that's good, because you speed the program up by cutting down on the work the processor has to do, but in a benchmark that's supposed to make the processor perform all those individual operations it's bad and gives misleading results your readers end up unwittingly comparing apples to oranges but assuming that they're comparing apples to apples.
Essentially, "Which CPU is faster and/or more efficient? Who knows, they were asked to do different work."
Worse than this, the biggest _actual_ security story to come out of the Olympics was that the company that was actually hired to provide security, G4S, didn't actually provide enough people and they had to bring in the military to cover at the last minute, thus proving the things you actually could plan for were screwed up:
The article talks about a few different things which are only somewhat related. The wifi vulnerability is the fact that an Apple device will automatically connect to a wifi network that has the same SSID as a network it has previously connected to.
Sort of. The vulnerability is that carriers are pre-configuring access points that devices will automatically connect to - not necessarily personal access points (e.g. at home) that you've previously used - and by configuring a malicious access point to look like the carrier's pre-defined one, you can cause the device to connect to the malicious access point:
I think the problem is that the iPhone will connect to an unsecure network automatically without alerting the user while the user believes they are on a different, secure network.
That can only happen if the Ask to Join Networks setting is off.
No, that's the whole point of TFA, which basically points out iOS devices have carrier pre-defined WiFi settings built it, and will connect to such networks automatically, such that placing an access point near a target that masquerades as one of these pre-defined access points is likely to cause such devices to connect automatically.
The original article is here, and includes notes that on some occasions, not only the baked-in SSIDs are visible, but also the passwords in plaintext: http://blog.skycure.com/2013/06/wifigate.html
"The rootkit does not touch files on storage but patches running processes in memory."
The rootkit isn't in RAM only. The way that it attacks the daemon processes is done entirely in RAM.
I think you are misreading the article. It's very possible the attacker used an exploit in a running daemon to execute code in that process, which then went on to modify other running processes. The article says they haven't found the original entry point. Nothing need be written to disk. If you restart you will blow away the kit, at which point the attacker loses communication with the system through their backdoor, so they just hit it again because you haven't patched the original exploit, because you haven't figured out what it is.
IANAL, but "Self incrimination" is forcing you to provide evidence against yourself in the absence of other sufficient evidence. Your liberty/property/wealth/life is therefore at risk at the hands of your government for an _alleged_, but not proven crime. Whether or not you believe that you can "compel" someone to co-operate legally doesn't actually mean that you can compel them to co-operate practically. Sure, you could throw them in jail for contempt etc. etc., but there must come a point when you exhaust reasonable options against someone who has only been accused. The fifth amendment protects you against unlimited abuse. Otherwise I guess someone could accuse you of having something illegal on your hard drive, even if you didn't, and jail you until you produced something illegal to support the allegation.
It is unlimited data. It's 2.5GB of high-speed, then unlimited lower-speed data. If you want unlimited high speed, then you can add that for $10/mo more. Likelihood is if you have Wifi at home and where you work and don't YouTube too much in between, you won't hit anywhere near 2.5GB/mo anyway.
How is it possible that copyright not only keeps being extended to prevent works of corporations from entering the public domain, but now other laws start stripping rights of the public for their own works for the benefit of corporations?
That's not what I've found. Apple discontinued support for iPad 1 less than 2 years after releasing it, meaning no iOS6 update, after disclosing 197 security vulnerabilities fixed as part of the iOS6 release.
This tells me one thing: If you want something safe that's going to last you more than a couple of years, don't buy an iPad.
Nevermind who Windows is "good for", let's look at what Windows has going for it:
1 - A ton of users familiar with its desktop UI 2 - The mother-load of desktop software 3 - A ton of games compiled for native x86/x64 4 - Office
With Windows RT Microsoft basically said "Screw #1. Screw #2. Screw #3." That leaves a tablet for.. people who want to use Office on.. a tablet? Oh and they also added Metro. Except that the market for portable devices is already full of app platforms that are far more established.
Why would you buy a Windows RT tablet? Beats me. Clearly someone thought they could toss their core value propositions but win in the app space because... because something?
Even forgoing "backwards compatibility" with x86 apps, maybe, maybe if you could actually compile desktop applications for it it would be a slightly more attractive platform, but being stuck with nothing but Office and what's available in Metro? It just isn't going to live up to many buyers desires or expectations.
Seems Blender's Cycles renderer is still having problems with AMD GPUs, and I see the finger pointed in AMD's direction. It would be nice to have some more hardware choices, but NVIDIA seems to be the only options at this point in time.
Given that the most read sectors probably contain parts of your OS and pagefile, and considering the size of a modern OS and the size of a modern game, you really expect there its likely with only 8GB that the sectors containing your game will end up on it? Its not impossible, but I know several games that have more than 8GB of content in and of themselves.
But you're missing the point. To maximize the benefit of the cache the stuff that's accessed most should be in the cache, whether it is the pagefile or something else. Otherwise, when your game is running and Windows is hitting the frequently accessed part of the page file, your game will run slow. Likewise, what is the point in putting 8GB of your game into the cache if only 5% of it is accessed frequently? Not only is that poor cache management, it also means that any other processes running that could be making use of cached data aren't because your game data is needlessly filling it up.
As more of these drives come out their cache management algorithm and cache size will be probed in performance reviews. If you want a drive to fully "cache" your game, buy an actual SSD and install it there. Meanwhile, this hybrid approach should provide an excellent cost trade-off for the general consumer, who should see a huge performance boost, despite not having 100% of data residing in the cache - but that's because it's less frequently accessed and thus contributes less to the perception of performance anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
If, like me, the summary freaked you out, you'll be happy to hear that VirtualBox is not getting the axe.
I'm suing slashdot
"... just as soon as I get off slashdot."
If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer.
I believe Apple already serves this with every iTunes update.
Case dismissed!
The interpretation of whether the benchmark is broken or not depends on what the benchmark was trying to ascertain. If it was trying to ascertain which CPU could process instructions fastest and most efficiently then it could be argued that it was broken because the result is heavily influenced by the logic of the compiler rather than the performance of the CPU. If it was trying to ascertain which platform had a better result allowing for toolchain-based optimizations, then you could argue the benchmark was fair *except* if this benchmark had specific optimizations applied to it that are not representative of what could be expected in a typical setting, and if that was not declared, because that would set the wrong expectations for readers, and it seems that is part of the allegation.
Supposedly, benchmarks are written to simulate real workloads. It seems to me that tweaking processor designs to run benchmarks faster is a good idea.
That may be true, *if* you don't break the benchmark in the process. This link, shared by another posted further down the /. thread, accuses AnTuTu of exactly that:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2330027
In summary, while the compiled ARM code performed a series of bitwise operations as written in order to excercise the CPU instructions, the Intel compiler seems to have applied some compile-time smarts to effectively bypass a lot of the work but achieve the same end result. In a real-world program that's good, because you speed the program up by cutting down on the work the processor has to do, but in a benchmark that's supposed to make the processor perform all those individual operations it's bad and gives misleading results your readers end up unwittingly comparing apples to oranges but assuming that they're comparing apples to apples.
Essentially, "Which CPU is faster and/or more efficient? Who knows, they were asked to do different work."
Correct: It should come as no surprise to anyone. Which is why it shouldn't be hidden.
.. if Microsoft bought Skype in order to provide access, and if any $ changed hands.
.. now that's what I call sloppy seconds.
Worse than this, the biggest _actual_ security story to come out of the Olympics was that the company that was actually hired to provide security, G4S, didn't actually provide enough people and they had to bring in the military to cover at the last minute, thus proving the things you actually could plan for were screwed up:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/supportservices/10070425/Timeline-how-G4Ss-bungled-Olympics-security-contract-unfolded.html
The article talks about a few different things which are only somewhat related. The wifi vulnerability is the fact that an Apple device will automatically connect to a wifi network that has the same SSID as a network it has previously connected to.
Sort of. The vulnerability is that carriers are pre-configuring access points that devices will automatically connect to - not necessarily personal access points (e.g. at home) that you've previously used - and by configuring a malicious access point to look like the carrier's pre-defined one, you can cause the device to connect to the malicious access point:
TFS and TFA are both shit, look here instead (linked from TFA):
http://blog.skycure.com/2013/06/wifigate.html
I think the problem is that the iPhone will connect to an unsecure network automatically without alerting the user while the user believes they are on a different, secure network.
That can only happen if the Ask to Join Networks setting is off.
No, that's the whole point of TFA, which basically points out iOS devices have carrier pre-defined WiFi settings built it, and will connect to such networks automatically, such that placing an access point near a target that masquerades as one of these pre-defined access points is likely to cause such devices to connect automatically.
The original article is here, and includes notes that on some occasions, not only the baked-in SSIDs are visible, but also the passwords in plaintext:
http://blog.skycure.com/2013/06/wifigate.html
No, you're misreading the article.
"The rootkit does not touch files on storage but patches running processes in memory."
The rootkit isn't in RAM only. The way that it attacks the daemon processes is done entirely in RAM.
I think you are misreading the article. It's very possible the attacker used an exploit in a running daemon to execute code in that process, which then went on to modify other running processes. The article says they haven't found the original entry point. Nothing need be written to disk. If you restart you will blow away the kit, at which point the attacker loses communication with the system through their backdoor, so they just hit it again because you haven't patched the original exploit, because you haven't figured out what it is.
IANAL, but "Self incrimination" is forcing you to provide evidence against yourself in the absence of other sufficient evidence. Your liberty/property/wealth/life is therefore at risk at the hands of your government for an _alleged_, but not proven crime. Whether or not you believe that you can "compel" someone to co-operate legally doesn't actually mean that you can compel them to co-operate practically. Sure, you could throw them in jail for contempt etc. etc., but there must come a point when you exhaust reasonable options against someone who has only been accused. The fifth amendment protects you against unlimited abuse. Otherwise I guess someone could accuse you of having something illegal on your hard drive, even if you didn't, and jail you until you produced something illegal to support the allegation.
Also, tlmf;dr.
Tattoos are permanent, technology moves on at an incredible pace. This seems like a bad idea.
It is unlimited data. It's 2.5GB of high-speed, then unlimited lower-speed data. If you want unlimited high speed, then you can add that for $10/mo more. Likelihood is if you have Wifi at home and where you work and don't YouTube too much in between, you won't hit anywhere near 2.5GB/mo anyway.
They'll be able to see for up to 3 miles. Scary stuff. Law enforcement will also be able to track the signals from the UAVs.
How is it possible that copyright not only keeps being extended to prevent works of corporations from entering the public domain, but now other laws start stripping rights of the public for their own works for the benefit of corporations?
LiFePO4.
Cliffhangers in the summary now?
That's not what I've found. Apple discontinued support for iPad 1 less than 2 years after releasing it, meaning no iOS6 update, after disclosing 197 security vulnerabilities fixed as part of the iOS6 release.
This tells me one thing: If you want something safe that's going to last you more than a couple of years, don't buy an iPad.
If you wanted to run Desktop apps, and wanted x86 compatibility, Surface RT is not the device for you. You need a Surface Pro.
Summary suggests Windows RT is not the device for a lot of folks ;)
Nevermind who Windows is "good for", let's look at what Windows has going for it:
1 - A ton of users familiar with its desktop UI
2 - The mother-load of desktop software
3 - A ton of games compiled for native x86/x64
4 - Office
With Windows RT Microsoft basically said "Screw #1. Screw #2. Screw #3." That leaves a tablet for .. people who want to use Office on.. a tablet? Oh and they also added Metro. Except that the market for portable devices is already full of app platforms that are far more established.
Why would you buy a Windows RT tablet? Beats me. Clearly someone thought they could toss their core value propositions but win in the app space because... because something?
Even forgoing "backwards compatibility" with x86 apps, maybe, maybe if you could actually compile desktop applications for it it would be a slightly more attractive platform, but being stuck with nothing but Office and what's available in Metro? It just isn't going to live up to many buyers desires or expectations.
Seems Blender's Cycles renderer is still having problems with AMD GPUs, and I see the finger pointed in AMD's direction. It would be nice to have some more hardware choices, but NVIDIA seems to be the only options at this point in time.
.. which patents MPEG LA were claiming to be essential?
Given that the most read sectors probably contain parts of your OS and pagefile, and considering the size of a modern OS and the size of a modern game, you really expect there its likely with only 8GB that the sectors containing your game will end up on it? Its not impossible, but I know several games that have more than 8GB of content in and of themselves.
But you're missing the point. To maximize the benefit of the cache the stuff that's accessed most should be in the cache, whether it is the pagefile or something else. Otherwise, when your game is running and Windows is hitting the frequently accessed part of the page file, your game will run slow. Likewise, what is the point in putting 8GB of your game into the cache if only 5% of it is accessed frequently? Not only is that poor cache management, it also means that any other processes running that could be making use of cached data aren't because your game data is needlessly filling it up.
As more of these drives come out their cache management algorithm and cache size will be probed in performance reviews. If you want a drive to fully "cache" your game, buy an actual SSD and install it there. Meanwhile, this hybrid approach should provide an excellent cost trade-off for the general consumer, who should see a huge performance boost, despite not having 100% of data residing in the cache - but that's because it's less frequently accessed and thus contributes less to the perception of performance anyway.